A Call to the UN Security Council to Act on DPRK’s Crimes Against
By Suzanne Scholte
Dear Friends:
On behalf of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and its Executive Director Debra Liang-Fenton, I want to alert you to a critically important project being launched today by the Committee and DLA Piper, an international law firm, at the British House of Lords.
Together with DLA Piper, the Committee has produced a document entitled, “Failure to Protect: A Call to the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea,” which outlines where North Korea is in breach of meeting its human rights obligations as a state party to the main UN human rights conventions, and presents the legal argument for how North Korea is committing crimes against humanity.
Vaclav Havel (former President of the Czech Republic); Kjell Magne Bondevik (former Prime Minister of Norway); and Elie Wiesel (Nobel Laureate) are the report’s co-commissioners.
It is the belief of the co-commissioners, as well as the Committee, that for far too long, the security threat posed by North Korea has relegated the human rights concerns in the country as secondary. North Korea’s nuclear weapons test, conducted on Oct. 9, has proven wrong the theory that not raising human rights concerns would help promote successful engagement on security issues. It is long overdue for the international community to take up the issue of human rights in North Korea to address the millions and millions who have died in North Korea’s political prison camps and who have been intentionally starved to death by Kim Jong-il’s withholding of food aid.
The document makes the following recommendations specifically to the UN Security Council in accordance with its authority under Chapter VI of the UN Charter.
1) Outline the major reasons for the Security Council intervention, focusing on the North Korean government’s failure to protect its own people and the threat to international peace and security caused by the major issues described in this report.
2) Urge the North Korean government to ensure the immediate, safe, and unhindered access to all parts of the country for the United Nations, international organizations, and NGOs to provide humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable groups of the population.
3) Call on the North Korean government to release all political prisoners detained in violation of their rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which North Korea is a state party.
4) Insist the North Korean government allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea to visit the country.
5) Request the Secretary-General to remain vigorously engaged in the situation in North Korea and that he report back to the Security Council on a regular basis.
The full text of this report may be found on the Committee’s web site at:
www.hrnk.org. Requests for hard copies may be sent to Debra Liang-Fenton at
hrnk_org@hotmail.com. Please allow time for delivery.
I hope you will read this document, and help support the international campaign to seek a process to address the human rights and humanitarian crisis in North Korea. The people of North Korea are dying by the hundreds every day. Our silence is their death.
Warm regards,
Suzanne Scholte
Vice Chairman
US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
